If I set up a security company in Bhutan, I'll instantly be one of the leading security companies (in Bhutan).

I take your point but I think there is a distinct difference between Bhutan and Russia in this sense. Also you may consider that you did hear about Kaspersky and the main difference between these guys used to be that Kaspersky is better at PR and marketing.

Dr. Web is one of the leading security companies (at least in Russia) and they've been around since 1992. They are by no means 'nagware' or 'junk scanner' - they tools are legitimate, powerful and useful

No no wants to spend a week in an elevator even if it means you get to go into orbit. Christ I can barely make it to the 15th floor without some jackass farting. A whole week. Don't think so.

To get from Vladivostok to Moscow on the train you would need 9 days. It used to take a couple of weeks or more. One train carriage carry approximately 30 people and the either share cabins with 3 other travellers or the whole carriage is one big cabin. People used to travel this way all the time before flying started to be an option.
I suppose with our iPads etc the journey will be even less difficult

Cannot see how they are going to support iOS devices - the demo clearly shows some custom app which is worthless. I still have to see any kind of custom keyboard (outside of Cydia) for iOS, which is a shame because Swype or SlideIt keyboards would really be great

I live in the county also, and I noticed that my commute was actually better than usual. Normally, the lights are so poorly timed on my route (which is with rush hour traffic) that timing them randomly would be an improvement. The timing is so bad that I actually attribute it to malice, or having some priority other than having traffic flow smoothly. When the predominant flow of traffic catches every red light, when there are major intersections with long backups for one road and no traffic on the other (long gone through the mistimed green), it's beyond incompetence. Hopefully this event shakes things up enough to get the system fixed, but I doubt it.

And you spelled "uv" rong. See how this is such an incredibly BAD idea?

I did not spell "uv" wrong. The five vowels:

A E I O U

Take the following sounds:

Ah Eh EE Oh OO

This is in accordance with the usage of the vowels in other European languages, such as Spanish or Italian. Thus, the word "of" would be spelled "ov". "uv" would rhyme with "move"

Admittedly, some work would need to be done to refine the phonetic spelling system and to promote adoption and education of the new system. I figure in a generation or two we might be able to iron out these regional differences. Of course, some will resist these changes: if we can get the NSA involved to monitor SMS and internet usage and introduce FCC regulations requiring broadcasters and recording artists to always spell and pronounce things correctly, and institute a new bureau of ruthless and violent enforcement, it should be doable. The back-catalogue of music and literature will have to be either destroyed or republished, and owning old editions will have to be criminalized. It'd probably be a good idea to identify uncooperative parents and separate them from their children, so we can properly institutionalize them using the new system.

Oh, and we'll have to invade England, I think - this nonsense about English English being the authoritative version has got to stop. If we play our political cards right and keep anybody else from getting involved it should be a fairly straightforward war without too much loss of life. We may have to use a few tactical nuclear weapons, but I think once we've established a willingness to use them (say, on a minor city) the Brits will know we mean business. One Britain is down I think it should be relatively easy to make Canada fall in line. Australians and New Zealanders might be a bit of a challenge since they're so well known for their weird accents - we could institute a temporary cultural embargo, that should prevent contamination until we're ready to deal with them.

In the end it'll all be worth it, though, 'cause we'll be able to use the "Don't call me Shirley" joke in writing and it will work properly. Really, all manner of homonym-based jokes will finally be open to use in writing. It will usher in a new golden age of literature.

Last.fm is NOT free. Last.fm is 3 GBP per month, no discounts for longer subscriptions. Sure you could use some of it functionality free-of-charge but the best bits (loved tracks, playlists) require payment (http://www.last.fm/subscribe)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA -- Send someone to NASA-AMES Research Center in Mountain View, and they're sure to expect rocket scientists and spaceships. But on a recent rainy morning, more than 100 budding engineers were r

An anonymous reader writes: In a blog post earlier today, Faling Leaf Systems released a prerelease of their DirectX 10 compatibility libraries for Windows XP. They're available here and includes a readme on how to install it and get the examples from the MS DirectX SDK. Looks like a sign of good things to come and it's finally likely that we won't have to upgrade to Vista just to play DX10 games when they start coming out.